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A little insight, challenge, class |
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Written by -- associate news editor Rodney Venis
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Thursday, 03 July 2008 |
Related Items
RODNEY VENISSTEPHEN HARPER
As the mainstream medium most vulnerable to the frivolous, it's easy to accuse TV journalism of being, as Edward R. Murrow warned, good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate.
So it's heartening to watch when it works.
CTV's June 26 evening broadcast wasn't Murrow. No one said the war was unwinnable. But it deftly took a humdrum news day and added a little insight, challenge and class.
The biggest story that night was Jean Chretien getting the last laugh on his nemesis John Gomery after the Federal Court ruled the latter's chatty ways with the media betrayed enough bias to have his judgment of Chretien and fellow sponsorship scandal target Jean Pelletier struck down. Sitting through a Chretien moral victory was like watching Brian Mulroney get away with Airbus all over again, but Craig Oliver, CTV's political correspondent, added a pair of tidbits. He called the ruling "devastating" -- the perfect word for describing how Gomery and most Canadians no doubt felt -- and he cast a different light on Chretien's infamous "small-town cheap" testimony.
When the former Liberal prime minister brandished George W. Bush's golf balls before Gomery, it did look a little too vaudeville to be a serious defense. Oliver's explanation: Chretien was convinced when he appeared Gomery's bias made him bulletproof, so he could afford to play the fool, and it turned out he was right.
Next up was saying goodbye to Sandra Buckler, Stephen Harper's notorious Sith Lord of communication. Buckler's handling of the national media turned the Tory's already toxic relationship with reporters into a tailings pond, so no one would have blamed Oliver for saying her last words to the gallery were "I'm melting." But Buckler was recovering from surgery from thyroid cancer and Oliver managed to produce a farewell that was gracious without being saccharine -- he described their relationship as "onerous" while tipping his hat to a "substantial" force in Canadian politics.
Now no newscast would be complete without a human interest story to tug at the heart and cloud the mind, as Kent Brockman would say, and CTV put up a doozy. Enroute to China for experimental stem-cell treatment to address a rare debilitating condition, Hailey Goranflo, 5, wasn't allowed to board by two airlines during a layover in Vancouver because she had the sniffles. It was a pretty fluffy story but there was a nice twist to the tale -- anchor Lloyd Robertson innocently asked "What can viewers do?" and the reporter gave out a few website addresses where corporate spokespeople could be dragged over the coals.
Then there was nifty macro-news piece on the liberalization of the web after Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) eased the rules.
It neatly summed up the high-minded part of the decision (the 'Net would leave its anglocentric roots to become truly worldwide as millions of Chinese, Arabic, Russian and other users would be able to type addresses in their own language for the first time) as well as the low (the top level domain name .sex was expected to sell for big money.)
There was another bit of fluff -- police talk man down from high ledge -- and that was that. It wasn't fancy, but it lived up to Lloyd Robertson's modest tag line: "And that's the kind of day it was."
-- associate news editor Rodney Venis
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 03 July 2008 )
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